Hell, the only reason Lucas introduced the “no marriage rule” for the Jedi is because he wanted Anakin and Padmé’s love story in Attack of the Clones to be a reminiscence of Romeo and Juliet’s Love story: a forbidden love story between two people that shouldn’t be in love. In The Phantom Menace itself there is no indication whatsoever that the Jedi are not supposed to have romantic relationships.
I agree with pretty much everything you wrote. I just wonder if Lucas had already conceived of the Jedi as celibate even during The Phantom Menace. TPM doesn’t explicitly mention the no marriage rule, but it’s clear that by the time Lucas wrote TPM, he was already developing ideas about a very weird “anti-attachment” pseudo-Buddhist philosophy for the Jedi, because the script emphasizes how the Jedi get very fussy about 10 year old Anakin’s attachment to his mother. Even at this early stage in the Prequels, it’s clear that Lucas’ vision for the Jedi and their anti-attachment philosophy is already at odds with mainstream sensibilities. Like, it seems absurd to the average audience member that the Jedi are so averse to emotional attachments that they fear a 10 year old being attached to his mom. This already suggests the Jedi are some fucked up cult that kidnaps infants before they can even form emotional attachments. So the “no romantic attachments” rule in AoTC seemed like a natural extension of what TPM set up. But yeah, it’s very likely that Lucas’ desire to shoehorn in some Romeo & Juliet was the motivating factor here, but this also feels like a natural extension of the “no attachment” stuff in TPM.
I don’t think it’s the same thing. They’re using it as a point to convey that he will need to master his negative emotions like fear if he’s going to be a Jedi. They turn him down for training, not just because they’re worried he’ll turn to the dark side, but also for his benefit. If they just hated the idea that people have families and wanted powerful Force users no matter what, they would have whisked him away no questions asked. They trained him because Qui Gon pushed it on them and on Obi Wan especially.
As much as I dislike how they’re portrayed in the prequels, this is a common misconception people have. There’s this idea of “oh, how ironic, they were religious zealots who believed in this messiah figure, this is like Jesus coming and he’s actually the devil.” No, not really. The only person who believes in the chosen one idea fully is Qui Gon. Everyone else expresses a lot of skepticism, rightfully so.
They never kidnap anyone. They have the parents’ permission. It is a philosophical issue, like you could say, well, the kid didn’t consent to be raised as a Jedi. But no kids ever consent to being born into whatever family or culture they’re in anyway.
Even as late as 1999 and 2000, maybe 2001 there are comics that have a Jedi couple in the prequel era. I don’t know a lot about it but one of them is a tree lady. It started with Attack of the Clones.